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Another great rule of thumb!

I would have selected this text also.  It's powerful to think that an image can promote discussion with limited time and attention.

This is a helpful takeaway!

I would like to get better at using this idea...

Maybe this will help pme fix my "notes" slides.

I think, too, the white background with the blue contrasting text is visually appealing.

This is something else that I need to consider when developing my two slides for this week.

This is where spending time in the slide sorter would help to see the slides from the audience's point of view.

The key words can also let the audience know the main topic while not being bored with too much text.  

Reynolds also says these "decorations" will help you lose credibility, too.

This always drives me nuts when I see presenters do this

I would have never thought to do this but it does create a last image in your mind and as a presenter you know what its referring to so there wouldn't be the 'reading from the slide' effect

I have actually seen the presentation below and as a viewer thought of how well-done it was.

The bolding/highlighting key text really does improve the quality of the slide

It's like advertising.  Simple, clear, powerful choices of text features and structures to draw attention to the content.

This is really interesting approach and I'm wanting to try it out in the near future. It easily keeps the audience engaged as they see images but are waiting to hear the connection/content

I like the idea of having contrast and white space.

My draft looked very much like this "eye chart".

I could not find this option on my document to use.  Is there a trick to it?  It is not under my S drop down menu.

I still need to figure out how to download the video links so I am not dependent on the internet and jumping in and out of the presentation with links as I find this distracting.

I love the sorter method.  It really helps you see the flow.

I feel that this is one of the most powerful sentences in this article.  "A picture tells a thousand words."  Photos and graphics can promote conversation!

Animation can be incredible annoying.  I think the one that is most grating to me is the typwriter one.  It would be cool to use it for emphasis like for acronym. I totally agree limit transitions.

Data is easily skewed if the x or y access isn't labeled properly or scaled with proper perspective.

...   Just because the software lets you do something it doesn't mean you should.  This caught my eye because I've fallen in the trap of bells and whistles.  I'm sure audiences have found my presentations to be extremely annoying at times when I 'tried out" capabilities of software.

I like to use video in my presentations.  I think it's a great way to have an expert from the field punctuate my message.  It's also a good way to engage the audience in your theme.  I do believe they should be short, however, no more than 2 minutes.

Love this graphic.  It's clear and goes with the theme of the concept.  

Indeed, less is more.  Don't bring in an elephant to teach the color grey.

If you have to reduce the font size below 24 to get all of the text on the slide then it may be too text heavy.

Love this idea.  I will definitely use it in my next presentation!

Good tip.  I found in looking at many of my presentations I had already highlighted key words.  So why did I add all the other text?

This is a helpful idea, I have never thought to do this before.

I agree - this is a really logical way to pair down my wordy slides without loosing important content. It also encourages note taking in the right way for students.

Occasionally, I have highlighted text on a slide, but I thought I was only putting relevant information on the slide with lots of bullets. Ugh. I could have probably gotten by (I now know I could have) with only putting the hightlighted word and another word or two on the slide, instead.

So much about PP I don't know how to do! I think it's time to take an advance PP class.

I have realized the same. I thought I knew PP pretty well, but starting to work on these new slides (and all the new information) has almost blown me away! I have a friend who just aced a college PP class - I am hoping she can help me work through some of the "new" stuff to me. I don't want PP to be too time comsuming, but I want them to be effective.

Makes sense when trying to tell a story and connect with the audience on an emotional level.

I definitely need to switch over to photography. I tend to use cutesy images. Not really sure why other than I like them. Using photos would bring a point home now if the right image is used.

Good rule of thumb.

3 seconds - will be a challenge.I will really have to try to think about  the audience and what might attract their attention..

If it takes longer, then I think a presenter should be quiet and give them time. It isn't that we can't give some silent time to read... it is just that we don't like to, I think.

Three seconds seems like a good time to transition anyway. 3 seconds of quite between slides, audience gets the glance and then the presenter talks...

I struggle with this when I present charts and graphs. The takeaway is to simplify the graph or chart to highlight what I'm trying to say.

We shouldn't need the time to read with only a few words on the slide. I like to give that "wait time" AFTER I have spoken. Still work work the same way - giving the audience time to comprehend.

When creating and preparing for a presentation, it is important to put yourself in the position of the audience.

I am guilty of including a lot of information on presentations. I need to remember that I can include information that is not a bullet point.

This is a pretty straightforward example of this process. It really isn't too hard once it is laid out like this, but it isn't a natural step for me either.

Great idea if it is possible with the slide content.

In my opinion, the slide would get too cluttered and distracting to do this.

This is a good correlation and great tip.  

I agree, this is one of my favorite tips so far, it made me rethink a couple of my slides!

This is good information and should be done during the 'analog' stage.

This one is tough because some companies demand the logo be placed on slides.

Good guideline for checking up on myself.

I like the steps used in this process.  I think the most challenging part of designing presentations is figuring out what is most important.  This seems so helpful in making those decisions.  

The most challenging part of design would be figuring out what to use to engage the audience (ie photograph). If we have the end design in mind, and know what our main points are, the text should be easily simplified.

Coming from an art teacher, this is GREAT advice!

Even coming from a very non-artistic person... this is GREAT advice! I couldn't make art when I try, but I can make crap... which means I know crappy visuals when I see them :)

This IS great advice, but...I will miss the cutesy graphics. (Just kidding.) Looking for the higher quality graphics that are appropriate is going to take some time.

I teach students about the parallel of white space with rests in music, I never thought about how that should be used in presentations before!

This is helpful to me, as I like to use charts, but have a hard time determining where to stop with information - balancing the need to know with the why do I care.

Again, I like the idea of consistency without the use of the templates. We are often drawn to the templates because they are consistent, but there are so many other ways to create the same effect.

I need to remember that this means relevant to the AUDIENCE!

It's interesting that the software we use to create presentations has bad presentation templates..

The templates were one of my original "draws" to PowerPoint. They made things so easy to get started.

But it made me laugh! :-)

It does. and all the examples here really help me to identify what is quality and what is not..

answer: almost every time i create a powerpoint. :-/

I did this in the past. I actually stopped using powerpoint because students didn't like it. I think I used the slides (as an outline) more than my students. I moved to telling more stories and relating topics to current interests and events. Students are much more engaged.

This is difficult! but it is rewarding once the final product comes out nice and clean...

These words stand out to me: support and supplement.

Good to remember to use no more than 2-3 different types of transition effects. 

Great point! I have seen some images or borders that are overused on PowerPoints! 

Imagining a presentation without visuals would have been crazy to think about before this class! 

This slide is great because it leaves me wanting to know more about the topic. I would really pay attention to the speaker because I would be intrigued by the visual! 

This is good to remember. We need to be okay with letting go of the need to "fill the slide". I know that I personally struggle with thinking I should add more visual appeal.

I never thought about whether an image is your primary or secondary focus on any given slide. The idea of fading the picture to the back for secondary is an interesting technique to make what needs to stand out more do just that.

This is good to note. It is time for us to step away from cliche pictures that will prevent our instruction from making an original, meaningful connection with our audience.

Presenters and teachers get in a hurry to create their visuals and use anything to fill the page. What I'm learning is that these images do more damage than good by distracting our audience.

It's interesting to see how something that can try to make the speaker more comfortable can actually work against the purpose they are speaking for. We need to ask ourselves, what is more important: our audience or our script?

This is a helpful reminder. It really hit me when I read one of the lessons in simplifying that stated we should never have a full sentence on a slide. We only need enough text for it to be memorable when we are sharing on it. In some cases, text may not even be needed to do this.

It's fine to use these images as comps until you decide whether or not the image will work but the high res image should be used in a final presentation.

Have to always keep this in mind.  The audience is the star- how can I make sure they feel satisfied after I'm finished withe my presentation?

This is something I have really learned in this class and had some interesting conversations with some people about this.  From my conversations I have learned that  people in occupations other than teaching have different oppinions about this.

I have to keep this in mind and keep working on keeping text as little as possible.

I need to take my own pictures more often.  My presentation is about history though so this is hard but give lots of presentations where I can take or use my own photographs.

This is hard for me.  I really like some of the templates in Keynote and don't feel like the audiences have seen them- the problem is they aren't always compatible with Powerpoint and sometimes have to present on a computer that only has Powerpoint.

Sometimes I'm like a kid when it comes to fonts and spend lots of times looking for a "cool" one.  I need to always remember that simple is better!

The thing is some kids have trouble with some of the letters in the fonts suggested. I use comic sans because I like the way the a and the g look. For special ed students with moderate disability, it looks more familiar to the way they are learning to print.

I'm not a designer and think I'm not very good at thinking like one- a weakness of mine.  I need to keep the design elements in mind.

I realize that my slides have been very text heavy in the past.  Now it is easy to think, duh, why put all the text on the slide, if I'm going to be sharing the information with my audience anyways.

This is very frustrating to me.  I've experienced this many times and I often end up picking a different picture.

This is a hard topic to explain to people. I have worked with staff for many years explaining bigger is better. You can always make it smaller and be ok but the oppposite is not true.

Being a business teacher I'm seeing a lot of similar traits to building resumes and app letters...the effectiveness of white space and as  mentioned here the eye test.

These slides are really hitting home with me with the larger font on the statistic. I'm realizing now that I haven't utilized statistics this way in the past in my presentations and will change that going forward!

I also find myself trying to be "consistent" so I don't vary the font size.  This illustrates how important it is to emphasize the important!

I've never seen a chart with the added emphasized arrow...I like it!  It definitely grabs your attention right away!

I'm definitely agreeing with using as few as bullet points as possible after looking through all the articles and lessons in this class. You're making me think real hard how I'm going to approach my college computer class that I teach. Obviously we aren't in PPT very long compared to the other Microsoft applications but never have I discouraged using bullets...now you're making this hard on me!  : )  There will definitely be some itmes and ideas that I take from this class and learn it forward.

Very simple but yet very productive!

I have done this far too often in the past and also been in presentations that used too many bullets. I'm very excited to learn how to avoid this pitfall.

When I first learned how to work with PPT, I thought animations and fades and such were a plus. Now I realize they get a little distracting.

This a great rule of thumb to go by!

As someone who is very visual in the way I process information, I can see that this second example would be what I would prefer. It's simple and it's a lot less to take in.

I thought too much white space was a bad thing. Here it actually works to make the image/text stand out. I always thought there had to be strict balance.

This happens at a lot of the conferences I attend. I get the documents with links and things but the actual presentation? It should NOT be any good without the speaker.

The AEA provides great clip art and real photography. I push it to my staff but I feel they use the google images way to much and they are not always appropriate.

This is a good way to get more pictures and less text.  It would also be easy to present on, given the pictures that you were showing.  I am assuming you show the whole slide at once, and not get one picture animated after another.

Do people seriously do this??

This is a good rule of thumb, I think that is why the visual on the page is so important to help quickly understand the content.

I really like this as well. I have such a difficult time figuring out what text to include. This will definitely help me to minimize and focus on what's really important.

This is a good point when thinking about trying to get closer to the "six words per slide" rule. Keeping in mind the key details can help decrease the use of words that are not needed.

Great idea! After deciding the important details on a slide, rather than just including those find a visual that represents what the bullet points would have siad. The presenter will still have to explain what the visuals mean, but that should happen anyway, much bettter than sentences next to bullet points!

I like this, but also wonder if it is too noisey. Do you think it could be divided into several slides of reasons, or does that become too many slides?

I'm embarassed to admit this, but it had never occured to me to prepare a handout other than a copy of the slides until this course.

So, this example is pretty extreme in how bad it is, but I'm really starting to dislike anything clipart. It seems it is never appropriate.

Wow. This anecdote makes the point very clear: The presentation is to aid the presenter, not replace the presenter.

Another issue I have seen with color is the projector. I have seen a lot of pretty presentations that were turned horrible by the projector. My principle was trying to promote some school spirit and had his slide in school colors (purple background and yellow text). Purple backgrounds were turned pure black when projected. It looked ok, but the point was completely missed. I think it is important to keep it simple and test it out if I can before I give it to help prevent that issue. 

This makes me think of my dear education professor in college. He was 70 something and loved teaching. He tried so hard to keep up with the times, and he must have had someone show him the audio buttons because every slide in his presentations would have a different sound effect. It wasn't really engaging, just annoying. But, we all knew how hard he worked and that he truly loved teaching. 

This view will also be more effective without all of the bullets and large chunks of text. 

This is one of the biggest struggles I have will use full background images. The text doesn't pop like I want it to. I like the idea of adding in the transparent box. 

This is where I feel I get stuck. I want them to be more engaging then this, but I also don't want to have simply concept pictures. 

I think this would be really effective if you reveal them as you talk about them creating that flow of content. I know when I first looked at this slide I started to try and understand the meaning of each photo. I would have to force myself as an audience member to wait for the presenter to explain them. 

Good to keep in mind. It is not about you or the images you choose, or the words we use. It is about the audience and having them on the journey with us.

I am excited to present with this point in mind. I know it will be different, but I think it will be a good different.

I am still thinking about this. How much is too much? This statement of what you might see on the evening news is helpful. I do think some animation, like fade, does make it flow and perhaps more interesting, but you can definately have too much of a good thing.

I have certainly been gulity of this. How small can I make the font to get it all to fit on one slide. Find the main message and clear away the rest.

Keep it simple. Over and over, probably the most powerful message throughout. I really think they made the point with the bill board analogy.

Very good point. On Wednesday when I presented I had a very minimal powerpoint, 12 total slides for the hour. But I was talking, sharing stories, had humor, and had plenty of table discussions. Slowly I can get better at this

Great example. Rather like painting. You want to have the eye move from one spot to the other, dicovering your message as they go. Nice!

I think this is important for images as well as text. I need to keep in mind that sometimes just having the words on a slide can be as powerful as an image.

We always need to keep in mind that the presentation and slides are for the audience, not the presenter. If we need a teleprompter than we don't know the material enough to be presenting.

I'm learning slowly. This morning in a presentation, I still had one slide that was heavy in text. For a split second I almost starting reading, but then I paused and let staff read it to themselves. Then we went on. I survived.